The popularity of digital media devices such as digital cameras, video cameras, mobile phones with audio and video recording capability and portable music devices that have recording capability has exploded in recent years. Instead of recording pictures, video and sound on physical media, modern devices record to rewritable memory devices. This means that the cost to create a new image, movie or audio recording has fallen to near zero, making the number of these recordings available in any given individual's library skyrocket.
But this new ability to store virtually unlimited numbers of media files introduces new problems. First, the sheer number makes it nearly impossible to manually describe and index every media file in one's possession. This means that, for many, photographs, movies and audio recordings are kept in poorly organized computer files and finding any particular picture, movie or recording is a difficult and time-consuming process.
The second problem is the fact that people typically trade up to a new computer every three years or so. This means that hours of video, thousands of pictures or hundreds of audio files must be transferred from the old system to the new—a sometimes daunting task.
A third problem is one can typically access locally stored media files only on the computer on which they reside. If one wishes to share the file with another one must typically employ some file-transfer method ahead of time (email, FTP, public server, etc.)
A fourth problem relates to e-mailing or sending your media files to another party, whereas the receiving party is not able to search the media files for the specific key indexes that the original owner had intended. While there are programs to allow the originator to type in key index words (tags) for searching and retrieving these media files from their personal computer, when these media files are e-mailed or sent to another party, these tags are removed from the media file, therefore the receiving party does not have an ability to search, sort, display, play or print these media files based on the original owners key indexes.
Finally, those who make a living providing content need some method for proving that a given work belongs to them, and that they are the original creator of the work.